Name:
Design Your Own Experiment!
YOUR TASK: Design an experiment that you can complete with items found in your house, school, or
community. Start with a simple question that you can run some tests to try to figure out. See below for some
examples. Then you will create a "journal article" to discuss the results of your experiment. On the last page of
this document, you will see the rubric that will be used to grade this assignment.
Sample projects/questions below are included to get you thinking, but feel free to come up with your own
question. The only experiments that are off limits are those that put you and your family in physical danger!
- Do toppings increase the likelihood of toast landing topping side down?
- What brand of chewing gum lasts the longest before losing it's flavor?
- Will the type of paper an airplane is made out of affect how long it stays in flight?
- What diaper brands holds the most liquid?
- What fertilizer amount is best for ____ plant?
- Which is the best way of keeping a peeled apple from turning brown?
- Which will fizz out more after 10 shakes, cold soda or room temperature soda?
- Does adding salt to ice and water slow down, speed up, or not change the rate the ice melts in the
water? How much does it effect this?
- What type of ball will bounce the highest when dropped from a consistent height?
Planning questions:
1. Question/Purpose: (what is my experiment about?)
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2. Hypothesis (What do I think will happen?)
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3. Independent Variable (What I am changing on purpose)
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4. Dependent Variable (What am I measuring that responds to the independent variable)
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5. Control Variables (What needs to stay the same in every trial so I don’t mess up my data.)
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6. Materials (List everything you need)
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7. Procedure (Write step by step, in order, what you will do for this experiment – repeatable by someone
else)
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8. Data: (List all information that will be collected during your experiment. Tables of measurement, graphs
observations, etc.)
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Now you can conduct your experiment and record your results in your "journal article".
Follow this link for how to write up your results:
https://mc.libguides.com/c.php?g=39012&p=9212649
EXPERIMENT RUBRIC:
